


Neither Hide Nor Hair

by cognomen, MayGlenn



Series: A Very Supernatural Starsky & Hutch [6]
Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Anal Sex, Bigfoot Hunting, Camping, Dragons, Explicit Consent, Kink Negotiation, Knotting Dildos, M/M, Reconciliation, Reconciliation Sex, References to Knotting, Safe Sane and Consensual, Werewolves, bestiality but werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: “So, just a regular arrest today,” Starsky says, recounting his day and trying to make it seem less exciting so Hutch doesn’t feel too left out. Starsky shrugs, drinking his beer. “How are your plants?”“They’re doing fine,” Hutch says, and is halfway excitedly telling Starsky that he’s sure this is the year his orchid is going to bloom before he sees how Starsky is just staring at him, and laughs a little sheepishly. “And I gotta get back on the street if the most exciting thing to happen is a plant that might bloom.”Hutch gets up to get a fresh beer. “Oh. Huggy came by. He has a—” Hutch rolls his eyes, “a job for us.”“A job from Huggy, huh? Do we go beat up a knight? Steal some treasure for him?” Starsky grins. “Or is he more of the ‘keep a damsel in a tower somewhere’ sort of dragon?”





	1. Chapter 1

The next few days pass in relative quiet. There’s all the wrap up after Hutch’s case, after Jeanie can’t be found for comment and Forest’s been mopped up and spirited away to wherever it is they put Vampires who have broken the law and threatened his partner, and it’s the one time Starsky is sure he’s fine with never seeing the guy again, questionable processes or not.

He’s just glad to be able to come home to Hutch every night, glad to see how quickly he heals up with the last of the wolfsbane and coke finally sweated out of his system. 

“So, just a regular collar today,” Starsky says, recounting his adventures and trying to make it seem less exciting so Hutch doesn’t feel too left out. “A purse snatcher, and a visit to Fat Rolly’s Bargain Circus. He seems to be doing okay, maybe not chasing any married ladies anymore.”

Starsky shrugs, drinking his beer. “How are your plants?”

“They’re doing fine,” Hutch says, and is halfway excitedly telling Starsky that he’s sure this is the year his orchid is going to bloom before he sees how Starsky is just staring at him, and laughs a little sheepishly. “And I gotta get back on the street if the most exciting thing to happen is a plant that  _ might  _ bloom.” 

Hutch gets up to get a fresh beer, limping a little. He feels almost 100%, though the delayed healing of the gunshot wound has left a little knotted scar in the meat of his thigh that gets tight after he runs. He needed to have stretched it out better today, but he has some salve for it before bed. “Oh. Huggy came by. He has a—” Hutch rolls his eyes, “a  _ job  _ for us. Well, for me.”

“A job from Huggy, huh? Do we go beat up a knight? Steal some treasure for him?” Starsky says, watching Hutch limp but by now he knows better than to point it out, it’ll just make Hutch walk around more out of pride. When Hutch gets back to Starsky on the couch, he reaches out and pulls Hutch’s legs up into his lap and starts rubbing his calves. “Or is he more of the ‘keep a damsel in a tower somewhere’ sort of dragon?”

“It’s worse than that. Something from his hoard’s gone on walkabout, and he wants us to track it down. Some kind of expensive fur coat.” Which Hutch wasn’t a fan of on principle, but he supposed if he’s going to wear snakeskin boots (which he does, and thinks they are fabulous), Huggy has the right to wear a mammal pelt. Hutch winces slightly, but submits to Starsky’s ministrations, leaning into it when Starsky starts to flex his foot back to stretch it. “I told him that wasn’t what the police were for, but he reminded me I’m off work for two more days.” 

“Sure, enough time to pick up a little contract work,” Starsky says, with a grin. He keeps rubbing Hutch’s legs, from ankle to thigh, feeling as his calves start to get looser. “So, Dick Tracy, any leads on this missing coat?”

“We're not getting paid for this—I told him that’s still illegal, even if I am temporarily suspended.” Hutch leans back to pick up a magazine from the table—a tabloid, of the kind with sensational, weird news that Starsky will occasionally pick up just to annoy him. He can’t believe he has this in his house. Well, Starsky’s house. Under the same roof as him, anyway. “It just so happens that a few people caught ‘Bigfoot’ on camera up in the mountains, and it just so happens it’s the same color as Huggy’s missing coat.”

“...I’m sorry, is Huggy asking us to shoot Bigfoot so he can have a new coat?” Starsky asks, clearly not following this train of events to the same logical conclusion as Hutch. He looks concerned. “I’m pretty sure we’d need a hunting permit.”

“ _ No _ , you doofus,” Hutch explains. “Bigfoot doesn’t exist. Clearly this is some moron running around in Huggy’s coat and people think it's Bigfoot. I bet you it's someone hired by one of the Bigfoot Watch tours to drum up some business—ow, ow, ooh, right there!” 

Hutch rolls over on the couch so Starsky can rub out the cramp in his hamstring. When the pain subsides he laughs, realizing he's as good as stuck his ass in Starsky's face. “Sorry. Thanks. Ow.”

Starsky swats the target he’s been presented affectionately. “So there’s a guy running around in a fur coat in the woods. I’m not sure that makes any less sense than Bigfoot does. Well, Sherlock, it just so happens I have the next couple days off so I can help you bust this case wide open.”

“Ouch,” Hutch says, his pride now wounded, too, and he slides off Starsky’s lap to stretch his own hamstrings, pulling his knees to his chest. “Look, I know it's hard to believe now that you know there's werewolves and vampires in this world, but I promise, if Bigfoot were real, we'd know about it. This is a clown in a fur coat.”

“Are you asking me  _ not _ to believe in something, now that you threw the doors wide open?” Starsky leans over Hutch, pinning his knees against his chest to help him stretch. “What about all these pictures, huh?”

Hutch grunts as Starsky holds up the rag magazine to display the blurry photos. “I mean the  _ Enquirer  _ has run stuff about werewolves and vampires, too!”

“Never, you'll note, with any actual werewolves or vampires in it,” Hutch points out, finally shoving Starsky off. “I'll call Huggy in the morning and tell him we'll look into it, if only to prove to you that Bigfoot isn't real.”

Hutch gets up, and offers Starsky a hand. “Come on, let's go to bed. I'll even let you rub tiger balm on my ass.”

It's the first vaguely flirty thing he's said all week, though he's more playful than serious. 

Starsky snorts. “That can’t  _ possibly _ be sexy for you. Come on,  _ Tiger _ . I promise I won’t get any on your balls.”

He does take Hutch’s outstretched hand, though none of his faith in Bigfoot has been shaken, and makes a little bet with himself about how real Bigfoot is as he retrieves the little pungent smelling pot.

“Well, okay, not  _ actually _ on my ass,” Hutch says, stepping out of his sweatpants. The stubborn knot of scar tissue is on the back of his thigh right under the line of his briefs, and Hutch tries to steal the balm away from Starsky, teasing, “Not close enough you'd be interested.”

Of course, though they'd slept together all week, they hadn't actually had sex since before Jeanie, going on two months now, and Hutch was feeling playful, if not also amorous. 

“I’m interested in all of you,” Starsky reminds, surrendering the tiger balm to Hutch before he gives him a shove down onto the bed. “But I bet I can reach that better than you.”

Starsky settles down next to Hutch, still mindful of how he’s healing, and leans down to kiss him, rubbing his back now, touching his body with a familiarity and comfort that leaves both of them a little more relaxed and easy. He lets Hutch apply the tiger balm himself and then helps him work it in, until the muscles loosen up a little. 

“So uh, I guess maybe we should talk about what’s okay?” Starsky wonders, before almost immediately backing off. “If now’s too soon, that’s okay. I just don’t want to step wrong again.”

Hutch’s features go serious, and he takes Starsky’s hand. The residue of the pungent balm on both of them he uses to work into Starsky’s hands, massaging between his knuckles. “You never stepped wrong, you dummy, how many times do I need to say that?” 

He’s on his side, sat up on one elbow, and he leans up to kiss Starsky’s cheek, but he can’t quite reach and gets his neck instead, just under his ear. “I want everything to be okay. We just need to take it slow with—ah—with the wolf.” 

Already Hutch’s face is bright red. He’d honestly rather be admitting a scat fetish or discussing German dungeon porn on the spectrum of kinks, but avoiding the conversation hadn’t worked last time, so here they are. “I-if  _ you  _ want to?” 

Starsky sighs. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, but I also don’t want  _ any _ part of you to be unhappy. There’s a solution that covers all of those things, right? And I mean, it’s gotta be possible. We can take it as slow as we need to. Or uh, or find...another way if that’s more comfortable to you. I don’t mind trying things out with you, figuring out what the limits are, but we should at least  _ try. _ If it doesn’t work out, we’ll figure another way. Just so long as it’s not cutting each other off completely again.”

“Right,” Hutch says, instantly, feeling nothing more strongly. He sits up so he’s at eye level with Starsky. “Right. I mean, if—look, the wolf would never—I mean, if you didn’t want to, he wouldn’t—just as I wouldn’t. If you’re not into it, he wouldn’t be.”

But Hutch stops himself, and listens to what Starsky said, like it just caught up with him. 

“But you want to try,” he repeats, like he’s confirming. 

“I do,” Starsky agrees. “It’s just  _ you _ , Hutch. So we can go as slow as you want. I trust you, even if sometimes you don’t really seem to trust yourself. I mean, listen, you could hurt me any old way as a giant wolf and you never have. Not even when you were totally hopped up on wolfsbane and out of your mind on drugs. If I can trust you then, I can trust you always.”

“Starsk,” Hutch says, and presses their lips together, cupping his cheek with one hand, like Starsky is the moon and the stars and has just given himself to him. He deepens the kiss, tugging Starsky down onto the bed with him, and just like that, something feels comfortable inside of him where it didn’t before, and he’s prepared to take control of this, nudging Starsky over onto his back and tugging his shirt up and over his head. “You trust me on this, but still want to believe in Bigfoot, huh?” 

“You want me to believe in dragons and leprechauns? Bigfoot is part and parcel,” Starsky assures him, easing his arms around Hutch’s back, kissing him just as deeply, and it feels comfortable again, like it should always feel.

Hutch laughs, and the mood is relaxed and playful again between them as he kisses laughter from Starsky’s eager mouth. “No wolf tonight, though. He’ll get you when I’m done.”

“You want any of me, you’d better let me go wash this tiger balm off my hands,” Starsky laughs back, though he makes no move to get up. “The tigerbalm handjob is banned in four countries I’m pretty sure. Human rights violations, cruel and unusual punishment, something like that.”

“Oh, see, you’re not adventurous at all,” Hutch teases, but he lets Starsky up. He supposes it’s a good break for them to get ready for bed, even if he plans on needing to brush his teeth again before the night is over. “You’ll fuck a werewolf but you’re scared of a little menthol?” 

“ _ Hutch _ , seriously,” Starsky laughs. “Keep away from any mucus membranes. Have you never got this stuff on your lips or near your nose? There’s easier routes to masochism.”

To be fair, Hutch has never gotten tiger balm near any mucous membranes except maybe his nose, so he doesn't know, and assumes this is where Starsky’s experience is greater than his. “Okay, okay.”

He leans hip to hip with Hutch at the sink as they brush their teeth, and he washes his hands very carefully before he leads Hutch back to bed. “Now, where were we?”

“We were talking about the leftovers the wolf is going to get. Which is not much,” Hutch giggles, sliding on top of Starsky and sitting up on his elbows. “Because the wolf is going to take it slow, but I'm not.”

Hutch feels freer now, less worried, like there's nothing he needs to hide from Starsky. He kisses him, rough and biting now, and kisses down his neck and chest, thinking eventually he'll go lower, once he's done marking up his neck and purpling his nipples.  

Starsky gives over to what he wants and digs his nails into Hutch’s back and shoulders, arching himself up when Hutch bites his neck so they can rub body to body, all sliding friction. He’s missed this, all this contact and softness interspersed with the possessive bites and how well Hutch knows him. Starsky doesn’t take it slow either, letting his hands roam, getting them down between them once he’s left pink marks on Hutch’s skin for a softer grip on his cock, stroking slowly. 

“Good,” Starsky groans. “Dun wannit slow. Been way too long.”

“Let me, let me—” Hutch stammers, but to do what? He wants to do everything to Starsky. “I want to fuck you, please? Need to get you ready for—”

“Yeah,” Starsky says, sounding relieved and eager, he’s been  _ waiting _ for this. Missed it. Has felt incomplete without it. “Yeah, Hutch, please.”

He grins, a wolfish grin, and kisses Starsky, letting that hang in the air as a promise. He reaches into the bedside drawer for where the lube and condoms  _ used to be _ , and nearly cries with relief when they are still there, like no time has passed at all. He’s working Starsky open with his fingers and they each have a hand on the other's cock while they kiss, Hutch sure of his movements and touching Starsky reverently, gratefully. “Love you, Starsk. Thank you. Thank you.”

Starsky cocks his hips up to make it easier, letting Hutch stretch him while he gets the condom onto Hutch’s cock and slicks him up in a firm grip, trying to rush him along, even though his body feels tight and unused to all this, it’s still Hutch. He still knows all the steps to the dance. 

“Love you too, you dummy,” Starsky tells him, pulling Hutch down for a kiss, before looking him somewhat dazedly in the eyes, with no less intensity. “Always, right?”

“Somehow, impossibly,” Hutch retorts, biting Starksy's ear. It's giving into wolfish, almost pup-ish, instincts, and maybe part of this is them playing until they learn how to do it for real. He warns as he looks down, “Getting a condom on a wolf will be a challenge.”

But then he lines up and presses home, taking Starsky all at once, if slowly, both of them groaning, the sensations too much, too good. As a human, Hutch can stroke Starksy's cock in time to his thrusts, can balance the pleasure with the ache, but when he's a wolf that'll be a bad idea. “So will this part.”

If anything, Starsky holds onto him tighter, rolling his hips as he hisses into it. It’s not pain, it’s just so much at once, and his body remembers this but it’s been a while. It takes him a minute, interspersed with pleasured groans, to answer. “We should both get tested anyway. Then we won’t have to worry about it, right? Well, the first part.”

“Already done it,” Hutch says. “Had the doctor—screen me when she did a follow-up yesterday.”

Hutch has never been so excited to only sleep with one person for the foreseeable future.

Starsky rocks his hips into it. There’s a lot about this; just this with Hutch, that he likes enough to lose himself in. Hutch’s solid grip keeping him hard and then stroking to  leave Starsky feeling him everywhere, the ability to turn his head and kiss Hutch whenever he wants. 

“We could do all the stretching beforehand?” Starsky suggests, cautiously. Breathlessly. “I knew a girl who used to, uh,” 

He loses the thread of the sentence when Hutch starts moving, gasping and swallowing, tilting his head back and finishing in some kind of jumble. “—with a toy.”

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Hutch moans into Starsky’s neck, pressing grinning teeth there. “Yeah, we will. What kind of toy?” 

Hutch thinks he knows—and can get something more like the wolf’s cock, just so Starsky is  _ prepared _ mentally as well as physically—but wants to hear Starsky say it. He's sure none of this is insurmountable, anyway.

Starsky bursts out in a series of feel-good chuckles as  he tries to answer, descending almost to giggling around his murmured encouragements to Hutch, before he manages to get out, like it’s the funniest thing he ever heard “—a  _ dog _ toy!”

“You're horrible,” Hutch says, but can't resist, “Maybe to  _ bone _ you with.”

They laugh, Starsky kisses Hutch, groans, pushes his mouth against Hutch’s ear and bites him back a little, just the press of his teeth into the sensitive lobe before he composes himself. “We could find one that uh, matches your dimensions, huh? Maybe even just a bit bigger so it all just goes easy and nice— _ Hutch. _ ”

The last is an encouragement to keep things up, because Starsky feels amazing right now, like they’re finally in tune with each other. 

“Yeah, yeah, Starsk,” Hutch grunts, spurred on by Starsky’s teeth and his words, rolling him over until he can get good leverage to fuck him against his prostate, to fuck him hard, to listen to his partner’s body and how he smells and sounds and moves and needs until he brings Starsky to climax, and follows after him. 

They lie panting together, Hutch still inside Starsky, though it's beginning to be uncomfortable, since his human cock isn't built for that. He explains, “This is what you'll have to get used to.”

Starsky laughs. “I’ve seen a few nature documentaries, I think I get what you mean.”

Still, he leans up to kiss Hutch’s cheek, running his hands through his hair. It’s only a very short while before Hutch slips free just because of the foibles of human anatomy, but Starsky doesn’t go anywhere, anyway, just hanging onto him like all his worries have vanished. At the very least,  _ this _ will always work between them.

“The more I talk about it with you, the less weird it gets,” Hutch says, letting out a breath in a sigh that sounds a bit like a laugh. “The more natural it feels. Maybe it's...just, safe with you.”

Hutch holds Starsky closer, curls a leg around him, too, and they kiss lazily until they feel sticky enough to clean up, and then tired enough to fall asleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, they take Hutch's car up into the mountains, since they have to stop by his place for the hiking gear anyway. 

“Here's our ‘case file,’” Hutch laughs, handing Starsky a slim folder with the Enquirer in it and a handwritten description of the missing coat which Hutch took on the phone. “It's like we're  _ playing at _ being PIs.”

“Huggy doesn’t have any leads on who was anywhere near the coat?” Starsky asks, considering both items in the file with a casual eye. “Aside from Bigfoot, I mean.”

He settles into the passenger seat of Hutch’s car after folding a beach towel over several times and using it to pad the jabby parts of the springs. He’s a little sore from last night still, anyway.  He settles in heavily for the long drive and puts his feet up on the dash, getting absorbed in the other parts of the tabloid more quickly than he probably should.

“Hutch, look, aliens abducted fifty six cows in Nebraska,” Starsky says, displaying the article for him, before he folds the whole thing closed with a rattling sound. “What if it’s Bigfoot who took the coat? Maybe he thought it was like a baby. Like that gorilla with the doll?”

“ _ Starsk _ ,” Hutch says, instantly exasperated, as only Starsky can make him. “Aliens did not abduct any number of cows from Nebraska, and Bigfoot can't steal a coat if he doesn't exist. Probably one of Huggy’s patrons was rooting around for some cash, saw the coat, and took it before they read the inside of the label that says it belongs to a fucking dragon, panicked, and ran into the woods to hide out. Get a magnifying glass on that picture, maybe, or see where they claim they took it.”

“It’s the same picture they always use,” Starsky says. “From the Patterson-Gimlin film. Northern California, right here in the same state!”

“Oh, great.” 

Hutch is taking them to the Bigfoot Hiking Tours point, which he normally avoids, but this time he thinks some of the conspiracy theorists might help. Maybe he can make Starsky talk to them, since he seems to speak their language. 

Starsky can sense the skepticism radiating off of Hutch, and he finds it hilarious in an ironic way. Imagine, a skeptic werewolf! He glances at Hutch and sees how serious he looks, and in a tone that heavily suggests he’s humoring his  _ werewolf boyfriend _ Starsky asks, “Oh-kay, hotshot, then what  _ is _ real? Is there a list?”

“Anything where sightings of and mythology for goes back at least a hundred years is a good rule of thumb,” Hutch says in that way he has of sounding like he knows all there is to know about everything. “Of course, people imagined Martians living on Mars in the 1800s, so may be 200 years is a better estimate. Yeti: real, but in the Himalayas. Wendigo, real, but if we're dealing with a Wendigo we'll be dead by morning. They're not pale and furry, though. It might be a  _ bitten  _ werewolf, a wild one, but the timing is off for the alleged sightings.”

Hutch realizes he's entertaining even more ridiculous ideas for this case because of Starsky’s superstition. “But this'll be an ordinary person. Do you mean you want a list more broadly?”

“Well if the Yeti’s real, then why wouldn’t Bigfoot be?” Starsky wonders. “After all, humans migrate all around. You know what you are? Closed-minded.”

Starsky waits to see the results of winding Hutch up, having sewn the seeds of chaos deliberately. At least this was a harmless subject for him to get his grouchiness out on. He also, smiling, reaches across the center console and takes hold of Hutch’s hand as they drive, file folded on his lap. 

“There's closed-minded, and then there's wide-eyed idiocy, Starsky,” Hutch says, launching into a tirade that's shortened only because Starsky holding his hand keeps him from gesticulating too wildly, and that impish gleam in Starsky's eye tells him he was winding him up on purpose. He huffs, annoyed. “Okay, fine, this might be a Yeti, or something  _ real _ . Do you want to bet on it?”

Starsky squeezes his fingers, grinning like Hutch just said the magic words. “I bet you lunch for a week that Bigfoot is real. And  _ I _ get to pick where we eat. Besides, it says right here that Bigfoots are supposed to have a unique smell. That’s why in the southern states, they call ‘em skunk apes. I bet your nose could follow that!”

“Lunch for a week,” Hutch says, taking his hand away from Starsky so he can give it back to him in a handshake. “Same rules if I win. And if you think you're convincing wolf-me to  _ follow _ a skunk scent, you completely underestimate how strong my sense of smell actually is. How do you even come up with this crazy stuff?”

And even though they're bickering, it's really more a banter: like an old married couple, or like brothers. It passes the time, and they're holding hands for most of it, still. 

“It’s all in the article,” Starsky waves the paper at his peripheral vision. “Aren’t you normally all about doing research before you run into a situation? Besides, I know at least as much about werewolves. Like the silver bullet thing.”

“You know a lot more about werewolves,” Hutch protests, as much against Starsky selling himself short as against the existence of Bigfoot. 

“I know lots of  _ intimate details, _ ” Starsky begins, before Hutch cuts him off again, getting them back to business.

“... _ But I guess _ any research is good research. Any tips about where to look, or when? Or where it was seen?”

They're coming up on the “station” where the “rangers” in charge of Bigfoot tours are. It's practically crawling with tourists and enthusiasts, which means three other cars are parked outside. 

“There have been several sightings this week, which is what we’re looking for, right?” Starsky says, verifying with Hutch, who nods. “So since Huggy’s coat went wandering, three. Hard to tell with the accounts in here how credible they are. I still bet it would be faster to go to the sites where it was last seen and you get your wolf on and see if you can track it—man in a coat  _ or _ beast—by scent.”

“Okay, so we’ll ask someone here where those are,” Hutch says, pulling into a spot in the dirt lot. The mountain air smells good out here, and he feels better already, even if they are about to go on a wild goose chase. “You’re gonna ask, right?” 

“I thought this was your case,” Starsky teases, slamming Hutch’s cantankerous car-door closed with a shriek of protesting hinges before he heads over to make friends. “Hi! My friend and I heard there were lots of Bigfoot sightings up here recently! We were hoping to have our first sighting, and it seems like this place is really hoppin’!”

The ranger turns around and Starsky is only a little surprised that she’s a lady, wearing a uniform with a bigfoot patch on one shoulder and carrying a clipboard. She answers his brilliant smile with one of her own. “Seems to be that’s the case lately. Have you come to take the tour?”

Hutch bristles jealously, seeing and smelling that she finds Starsky attractive. He honestly wants to bark at her, but he knows he can't antagonize the people they need. “Right, just wanted to see what the fuss was about.”

To his horror, Hutch puts on Flirting Mode, which is the only way his stupid animal brain can think of to distract her from Starsky, and he smiles.

“Well, the fuss is kind of silly,” she confides. “But if you two are here to just enjoy some nature and  _ maybe _ see something special, you can’t go wrong with a hike even if we don’t see Bigfoot.”

“But we’d really like it if we did,” Starsky says, practically hip-checking Hutch to get him to behave himself. 

Hutch coughs, backing down, until he says, “Right, so, do you guys have maps? My partner and I really like to hike alone. Don’t the big groups scare the big guy off?”

Now the woman looks at him skeptically, like she realizes they’re both just pretending to believe in Bigfoot, but she decides Hutch is the crazy one. She turns to Starsky instead. “We do have maps, if you’d like one. I can even mark out where the sightings have been.” 

She holds onto the map a little firmly as Starsky goes to take it, and she leans in. “You just have to promise me that you’ll let me buy you a crappy coffee at the lodge sometime.” 

Starsky chuckles. “I’d like that, just us two true believers.”

Briefly, he glances at Hutch, and then wonders if a werewolf would make a good park ranger before he lets the whole notion drop as she circles a few places on the map.  “And I’ll mark in a few places along the way where there’s great views, too. Just remember, Bigfoot is supposed to have a strong odor—”

“Yes ma’am, I know, if we smell something weird, be careful,” Starsky says, respectfully.

“I was going to say don’t go haring off into the woods off the path because someone stepped on a skunk cabbage,” she laughs. “It’s easy to get lost in the park if you go off the trail.”

“We won’t get lost.” Hutch really wants to tell her that he and  _ his partner _ hike a lot in this area, which is a complete lie, so he manages not to say it. He usually hikes a bit closer to the city, and when they camp, they do it out by the lakes. So really they’ve just got this map and his own nose as the head back to the car for their things.

“You know, we could just pack a single tent and sleeping bag, in case we find anywhere out there we’d like to stay,” Hutch says casually, putting together two packs like he hadn’t just been rude to that woman.

Starsky laughs. “That’d really make a point to Ranger Bobette, wouldn’t it?” 

He displays her name and number on the back of the map she’d handed over, and gives Hutch an eyebrow waggle to give him something to think about, before he takes his backpack. “Don’t worry buddy, I just got you back. I’m not going to run off with the park ranger, even if she believes in Bigfoot.”

Hutch narrows his eyes at Starsky, wondering what this is payback for. Then he huffs and shakes his head. “You better not. I’ll track you down.” 

He grins and hands Starsky a pack, slinging on his own. “Okay, let’s see that map.” 

They puzzle over it with their heads pressed together, and Hutch eventually gets fed up with the bad Xerox and pulls out his own maps. 

“I mean I think we should pitch tent at one of these campgrounds before we go traipsing around anyway. Looks like this one is up within a mile of where the sightings have been,” Starsky points one out on Hutch’s map, a designated camping space. “Though that might mean it’s crowded, I don’t want any bigfoots sneaking up on me while I’m asleep.”

“We could alternate watches easy enough,” Hutch counters, and pulls out what he hopes are the big guns: “If it's a crowded place, we'll need two tents.”

Starsky laughs at him. “The punchline of that joke is ‘Relax!’ isn’t it? Where do  _ you _ wanna sleep, then? No matter where, we should pitch our tent first, before we go off into the woods. I don’t want to have to try it when it’s dark and we’re both tired.”

“Okay, okay. I promise we'll pitch our tent before we go look for it. Him, this person, I mean. See, you got me thinking it's Bigfoot now!” 

Hutch swipes both the maps and leads the way. 

“I’m already planning what I want for lunch,” Starsky says, smugly. He lets Hutch set the course, though, and feels pretty confident that even if Hutch can get lost in the woods, his wolf can sniff their way back out again. It means he has time to enjoy nature, looking around at the forest surrounding them and the blue sky above.

It’s all peaceful and idyllic until the first mosquito bite. “Ow! You little—”

Starsky smashes the bug vehemently, but he knows there’s never just  _ one _ . “I don’t suppose you got any bug spray in all this stuff?”

“Mosquitos prefer to bite you if you eat junk food, so I'm safe,” Hutch says with complete confidence, and then slaps his neck. “Hey!”

Of course it's a mosquito bite on his neck. His shoulders slump, and he turns his back to Starsky. “Bottom pocket, you may need to dig around.”

Starsky obliges, digging around through a few packs of condoms, several granola bars, and a snake bite kit before he manages to come up with the bug-spray. He tucks everything else back into the pack and begins applying the stuff to exposed skin. “I would’ve thought you’d be even more delicious than me, being that you’re ‘all natural’.” 

“Ha ha,” Hutch says. 

Starsky grins, and slaps another mosquito off Hutch’s arm before he gets him sprayed down. “I guess I was right, they really like you.”

“Maybe we should just move further up where there's fewer of them,” Hutch says firmly, though he's also tempted to disappear behind all his fur. Unfortunately, the moon isn't remotely out, so he couldn't, anyway. 

He leads the way up to the first sighting point, and sniffing around yields their first victory. He doesn't smell skunk or much else besides lots of human. It's all he can do now without changing. “I even want to say I smell Huggy’s scent up here.”

“What’s a dragon smell like, anyway?” Starsky wonders, idly, huffing a little as they go up the trail. 

“Hmm,” Hutch says, thinking about how to describe it. “Well, he has that cologne he wears. That, plus the smell of snake. Do snakes have a smell to humans? Like bird-smell, but milder and cleaner.” 

Hutch shrugs a little helplessly, convinced he sounds like a crazy person. “Okay, now, where's this camping ground?”

“Should be pretty close by,” Starsky says, before they round the bend to find a place that’s got a lot of tents and campers set up in it, probably because there have been so many Bigfoot sightings. He and Hutch hesitate at the same moment, then trade looks. Starsky hikes the pack up a little higher. “Maybe somewhere a little more private?”

“Ah, yeah,” Hutch laughs, and is willing to admit that he couldn’t smell anything but human in this place, quite honestly. They hike to the edge of the campground, and settle on a heavily wooded space that doesn’t have room for both tents and a campfire but has plenty of privacy. Out here, Hutch can begin to smell forest again: deer and squirrels and even a bear. Not a whiff of anything skunk-like, but neither does he smell anything that might come from a fur coat owned by their friend. He breathes deeply, and nods. “How’s this?” 

“Yeah, I like this,” Starsky agrees. He sets down his pack and clears a space of pine needles and fallen sticks to find a fairly level place for the tent, making sure it’s free of any really lumpy roots or ant nests. “So I don’t suppose we can wrap this up fast and just finish out the weekend camping, huh?”

Starsky already knows better, but it’s nice to dream.

“I wish,” Hutch replies. He had always taken Starsky for something of a city slicker, growing up between New York City and Bay City, but happily, Starsky is a pretty good camper. “Next weekend we have off, if not.”


	3. Chapter 3

As he and Hutch stretch the rain-fly over the top of the tent just in case, Starsky grins at him, making trouble. “Okay so what wins in a fight, a Yeti or a Werewolf?”

Hutch laughs. “Not sure I know of it happening outside the movies. Probably the Yeti, unless it was a whole pack against it. Or are you just asking to be facetious?”

“I mean, I figure the fight stats have to be something that’s of interest to most supernatural creatures, right?” Starsky says, with a shrug. 

Hutch narrows his eyes at Starsky slightly, though still playful. “If we  _ do  _ find a Yeti or a Bigfoot, I’m not fighting it.”   

“Not even for the scientific data?” Starsky laughs, before he slides his pack into the tent and helps Hutch set up the little camp stove and build a space for a fire so they can stack wood in it. “How about just enough for some pictures, huh? Think of the money we could make selling it to the tabloids; ‘bigfoot werewolf showdown’. Nobody’d believe it but we’d have royalties for days…”

“I'm certainly not fighting a Yeti just so you can run a book,” Hutch says, and laughs, loud, from his belly, shaking his head at his goofball of a partner. “Probably Huggy has already got something like that going, anyway. You know Dobey would have our guts for shoelaces if you got me in the  _ Inquirer _ .” 

They pack a daypack which Hutch tightens to his back, needing the exercise the added weight grants, and then he takes a big sniff. “No good, what's the map say?”

“Most of the sightings are concentrated north of here,” Starsky says. “But uh, that’s probably where everyone is gonna go look, and we know that Bigfoot is a reclusive creature or creatures, and  _ if  _ it’s just a guy in a fur coat in the middle of summer…”

Trailing off, Starsky gives Hutch a look that suggests how improbable that is, before continuing. “Then he won’t want to be where a bunch of people are either. So I guess, if you were hiding out from a crowd, you might try being somewhere they  _ aren’t _ gonna be, huh?”

“That's a good point,” Hutch says. “I'll be able to smell a lot better if we get further out from heavily trafficked areas, too.”

They stay on the trails at first, until they veer further east and higher in altitude. They snack as they walk, and don't talk much, focusing on putting ground between themselves and the crowds for a solid two hours. 

“I have an idea,” Hutch says, when they stop for water, both panting a little. He checks his watch while Starsky drinks. “But it means you have to carry the pack.”

“And your clothes, right?” Starsky grumbles, but he reaches out to take it anyway, letting Hutch stuff his clothes into it. “Hey, if anybody comes up this path, what do I say?”

“That I'm your very handsome partner,” Hutch says with a wink, and looks around to make sure he doesn't have an audience before changing. He yips once at Starsky, licks him in greeting, and starts sniffing around. 

“Yeah, I guess you are,” Starsky agrees, reaching out to ruffle Hutch’s ears affectionately, since he hasn’t gotten to do so in a while.

They get off the path now: Hutch scent-marks the way to be sure. It's not really necessary, as Starsky’s scent is settling enough and familiar enough to be easy to follow back, but better to be safe than sorry. 

Hutch picks up the pace now, zigzagging about to cover a lot of ground sniffing for any unusual scents: mink from the coat, Huggy’s scent, or even a skunk. They do have skunks here, so it doesn't prove anything when he does get one whiff of it on the air, but since it's inconclusive he doesn't alert Starsky. 

Starsky follows dutifully, though he has a tougher time with the brush than Hutch does, and he wishes not for the first time that he could change shapes too, as he fights his way through tangled brush that Hutch seems to get through effortlessly. No matter how quiet he tries to be, it doesn’t  seem to be working.

“Well one thing’s for sure, if it really is a bigfoot, we aren’t getting the drop on it,” Starsky mutters to himself the next time the pack hangs him up in branches. 

Hutch stops them, then, sniffing around an area until he hears Starsky’s breathing even out. He has four legs, after all, and Starsky is carrying the pack. After finding nothing, he trots back to Starsky, whining and licking his hand. He noses around his pockets for the map, needing a new direction. 

On the other hand, maybe they could enjoy just a leisurely stroll like this: Hutch doesn't really expect they'll find anything, so he doesn't know why he's rushing them. And if they get much further, it'll be dark when they get back to their camp site. 

Hutch circles Starsky’s legs, rubbing against him like a cat. He can hear water, so he looks downhill, ready to lead the way. Starsky picks himself back up, giving Hutch an affectionate pat, and follows him down the embankment, figuring Hutch wants a drink, too. Starsky pulls a water bottle and has a sip and then nearly chokes on it as they emerge from the forest to the muddy riverbank.

“Hutch!” Starsky coughs, still bringing up water as he wheezes and tries to get other words out, before he finally just points to an enormous footprint in the mud. 

Hutch had actually wanted mostly to play in the water, though neither wolf nor man would have readily admitted it. Some instinct for tracking prey maybe led him to the water, where all animals needed to go at some point, to try to pick up the scent, but Hutch actually leaps back like a snake had just popped out of the water when he sees the size of the footprint. 

He returns to sniff at it, cautiously, leaving Starsky to laugh at his acrobatics. It does smell like skunk—strongly, almost too strongly—and also a bit like human. 

It can't be. Hutch refuses to believe it. It's a trick, a fake footprint to drum up Bigfoot Hype, and Hutch snorts disdainfully at it.

“What?” Starsky says, in disbelief. “You don’t believe your own eyes and nose? Even  _ I _ can smell that.”

Starsky lifts his eyes from the footprint, suddenly concerned that a bigfoot will pop out of the bushes at any moment. He scans the area quickly, looking for more signs, and he finds the next footprint leading down into the edge of the water.  “This looks pretty fresh, too. What do you wanna do, partner?”

Hutch looks at Starsky, and there's no question that the look is meant to convey how much Hutch does  _ not _ think this is real and how gullible his dumb but admittedly beautiful partner is. But he growls, whuffs as if to say,  _ Fine, fine, I'll check it out, _ and sniffs around the spot, nose to the ground in an ever widening circle, searching for more skunk smell. 

There isn't any, of course, and Hutch is about to transform back just so he can tell Starsky that the scent and footprint  _ had  _ to be planted, when there's a loud crunch of twigs in the brush. 

They look up as one.

Starsky reaches down and grabs hold of Hutch as the large creature lifts itself slowly out of the brush nearby, just on the other side of the stream; a hairy brown head with a human-like face. Starsky stops breathing for a minute, before Hutch leaps out of his grip and splashes into the stream, and the creature takes off.

“Don’t chase it!” Starsky calls, but it’s too late. 

Hutch is already bolting after the thing, leaving Starsky splashing into the water behind him, chasing bigfoot into the woods  full tilt as he tries to keep up with his four-legged friend. Starsky chugs along after, running flat-out, and thinking that it must be so much faster than they’d thought if both he and Hutch can’t catch up to it. 

_ Don't chase it? _ Hutch huffs in disdain, legs pumping as he bolted up the other side of the mountain after the shape. It smelled all wrong, not really like skunk but not entirely like a human, and nothing like dragon or fur coat. 

All the more reason to chase it!

Hutch is just beginning to feel he is gaining on it when a person bursts out of the trees, and though he dodges, he hears Starsky collide with the human and go down. Looking back to see what the damage is provies enough time that when Hutch glances back up the hill, the Bigfoot, or Bigfoot lookalike, is gone. 

“Oh!” cries the woman whom Starksy was sprawled out on top of. It was the same park ranger from the lodge, blonde and pretty. Bobette, wasn't it?

Breathless, Starsky makes an apologetic sound and gets up, helps her back to her feet. He realizes he’s left huge wet patches all over her from running through the stream, but all he can think of to say is, “Hey, did you see that! Bigfoot went right past here!”

Bobette dusts herself off, looking at the wild-eyed Starsky, and then down at the wolf suddenly appearing at his side. Suddenly, she laughs. “Is ‘Bigfoot’ your dog’s name?”

She gives Hutch a bit of a knowing look, then considers the both of them together, out of breath and panting. “Are you alright? Have you been chasing a bear around through the woods?”

Hutch does not like the look she gives him, and he rumbles a little, on the edge of a growl, but stands at Starsky’s heel so she’ll buy her own story about him being a  _ dog _ —even though,  _ Seriously? _ he thinks,  _ How many dogs do you know that are this big? _ —it’s going to give him a complex at this rate.

She does take a healthy step back, but then she’s closer to Starsky, which Hutch doesn’t like, either. “What happened to your friend? I hope he’s not chasing a  _ bear _ ! You know, he seemed a little too excited about this Bigfoot thing, it’s not safe.” 

Hutch wants to growl again, but it’ll probably give him away, and anyway Starsky has tightened a hand in the scruff of his neck, which has a frustratingly soothing effect. 

“Ah, no he stayed back at the campsite,” Starsky says, rubbing the back of Hutch’s neck a little as a pretense. He’s going to have to get Hutch a collar one of these days. “He, uh…his stomach wasn’t feeling very well.”

Bobette looks down at Hutch again, maybe a little  _ too _ knowing, but she smiles anyway. “I hope your friend feels better. You know, it’s dangerous for your dog to be off leash out here, and you have to have a special permit to camp with one. Come on back to camp and I’ll help you fill out the paperwork, okay?”

Hutch  _ does _ bark at that, indignantly, and is a little satisfied when she jumps (even if it makes Starsky jump, too, which makes him less satisfied). 

“Yes ma'am,” Starsky says, giving Hutch a glare before he starts following Bobette back. “But i swear I just saw  _ Bigfoot  _ and some tracks.”

“Probably a bear,” she said, walking quickly uphill and not even short of breath, “especially if it ran from you. Bears are easily spooked, even as big as they are. Where were the tracks?”

“Down by the river,” Starsky says, pointing in a vague direction. He does notice she leads him away from the direction he’s pointing. 

Hutch is glad she doesn't ask to see the tracks, since he's pretty sure he stepped all over them. In fact, he thinks, trotting along behind her, maybe the undercurrent of the scent he caught in the footprint was...hers?

“What kind of dog is he? Unusual coloration for a Huskie.” She was making conversation now, probably figuring Starsky for a the-way-to-his-heart-is-through-man’s-best-friend kind of guy. Hutch tries to walk between them, but she doesn't allow much room, and he huffs, a frustrated sound. 

“Well, I think he’s part something else,” Starsky explains, as casually as he can manage. “I mean, he’s pretty big, too, but I always figured he was just a really interesting mutt.”

Hutch huffs again, considers tripping Starsky, but he'd probably just fall pillowed on her breasts again, so he decides not to try it. 

Starsky rubs Hutch behind the ears, gently, to soothe his pride. “So how long have you been a ranger out here? Seems strange you’d give bigfoot tours if you’re such a, well, skeptic.”

“True believers are always skeptics,” she said. “Faith is what keeps me out here looking for facts every day.  _ Not _ the footprints some of my colleagues like to leave to excite visitors.”

Hutch makes a noise like  _ ha! _ and feels fairly well satisfied. It doesn't exactly explain where Huggy’s coat got to, though, unless one of the other park rangers stole it? That doesn't make much sense…

“Alright, so you only believe the cold, hard facts?” Starsky asks, halfway into flirting before Hutch mouths his hand warningly, and Starsky leans back. “So let me ask you this, have you ever actually  _ seen _ Bigfoot, or do you think whatever’s happening now is just…say somebody running around in a big fur coat?”

That makes her laugh, too, though, so there goes Hutch's theory. 

“If I had, would you believe me? That's why I encourage people to go out in the woods and see for themselves.”

_ That's also why you stopped us from chasing after it _ , Hutch begins to suspect. 

Soon, they arrive at the ranger station, having made a wide circle of the area, and they are surprisingly tired and ravenously hungry. Bobette hands Starsky a clipboard with a form and a pen. “It's a nominal fee, but if you keep him on-leash next time, you don't have to pay it. Safer for him, cheaper for you. It's a good idea to fill one out, anyway, in case you or he gets lost, rangers know who should be with who.”

As soon as she's gone, Hutch gives Starsky a hard look, and then drags the backpack off behind the building in his teeth. Starsky cheerfully fills out the form with a description of Hutch as a wolf, and his own name and address, after reading and signing the information on why he should keep Hutch on a leash (some of which he agrees with), he leans around the corner.

“When would you say it was that you had your last rabies shot?” Starsky wonders aloud, signing the paperwork. 

Hutch walks around the corner in human form, buttoning up his shirt, still glaring. 

“I'm up to date on all my shots,  _ including  _ rabies,” he says, sitting beside Starsky to tie his shoes. “She knows something about Bigfoot she's not telling us, I'm hungry, and we need to call Huggy. Do you think they have a phone here?”

“I mean, if anywhere, it’ll be here at the ranger station,” Starsky observes, putting down ‘current’ on Hutch’s forms, and leaving them in the appropriate box. “She said I need a leash for you, too, huh?”

Starsky gives Hutch a twinkling glance and a bright grin, before he checks the door and finds it open. “Looks like there is a phone inside. You wanna call Huggy?”

“There's also a snack bar,” Hutch says, ignoring Starsky’s other remark, making no sign of hearing it except for a faint blush high on his cheeks. “You get us some lunch. I'm eating for two.”

“Oh yeah? When’s the puppy due?” Starsky laughs, but he goes to get them both some food before Hutch has to chase down a rabbit or something.

Hutch gives Starsky the Hutchinson Finger while he waits for Huggy to answer his phone.

“You sure you haven't found your coat?” he hisses. “We're checking out the mountains like you said, and this looks way more like a Bigfoot than a thief. But don't tell Starsky I said that.”

“Man, I am telling you,” Huggy says. “Bigfoot is a scam! It’s got to be my coat. And don’t go getting a bunch of mud on it when you collect it, either.”

Hutch takes a deep breath as though to yell, but lets it out in a sigh. “Okay, we'll keep looking. As long as you're sure we wouldn't do better looking around the city and not—”

“You think anyone would do something that stupid on my turf?” Huggy shoots back. Not many people know he's a dragon, but everyone knows Huggy has a lot of friends, high and low, good and evil, on each end of almost every spectrum. Hutch likes to think he and Starsky hold a special place in his heart, as he does to them, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't also befriend their enemies if he could add to his hoard. 

“Okay, okay. We'll keep looking,” Hutch says, maybe relieved that he doesn't have to concede the existence of Bigfoot, yet, after all.

Starsky comes back out with a tray full of hot dogs and potato chips, displaying it for Hutch’s approval before he finds a nearby picnic table and sits down to eat. 

“Huggy is still pretty sure it's out here,” Hutch reports, halfway through his hot dog. “And he agrees with me that Bigfoot is a hoax. If Huggy hasn't heard of it…” 

He stops talking to continue eating, and thinks about ordering another hot dog and some Frito pie.

“Hutch, I know what I saw. You know what  _ you _ saw,” Starsky says. “And if Bobette isn’t covering for something, I’ll eat my hat. I’m pretty sure she’s got you figured out, at least.”

“No way!”

Starsky stuffs his mouth with food, chews for a few minutes, and then reveals why he seems so sure. “She’s acting like I would if I was trying to keep people from finding out about you.”

“If she did know,  _ we'd _ know about her. I'd know about her,” Hutch says, eyes flashing. 

Hutch gets up, and returns with another hot dog, two protein bars, and a banana, and he continues like there wasn't a break in the conversation: “Unless she is trying to protect a Yeti or something. Or—or someone who stole Huggy’s coat.”

Now Hutch really isn't sure what to believe. His nose wasn't helping him, which was unsettling. He pinches his brow. “I don't—have  _ you _ got any ideas?”

“Yeah, we tell Huggy he’d better make an insurance claim on the coat,” Starsky suggests. “Because if between your nose and my eyes we don’t have it, we’re already in trouble.”

Starsky finishes his lunch, and then pushes his leftover chips toward Hutch for him to finish off. “But I know better than to guess you’re going to do the smart thing and give up so let’s regroup at camp and figure out what to do next?”

They're alone enough in the ranger station—Bobette is nowhere to be seen, now, like she really did just give Starsky a form to keep him away from something, and the gal working the snack bar is doing crossword puzzles—so Hutch puts his hand face-up on the table until Starsky lays his hand in his. He's grateful that Starsky knows to just let his frustration roll off him until he wears it out. 

And, damn it, Hutch had told himself he was going to listen to Starsky more. 

“Sorry. No, I—yeah. You're right. Let's go back to camp. You need anything else while we're here?”

Starsky squeezes Hutch’s fingers. “Yeah, a nice time alone with my boyfriend, huh? Maybe that’s what Huggy planned in this whole endeavor.”

He picks up the tray, grabs a couple of cans of soda from the vending machine, so they’re nice and cold, and gives one to Hutch before they head back to camp. “Also, dry socks and pants would be nice. That stream was pretty cold!”

“Oh, geez, I’m sorry, buddy,” Hutch says, shouldering the pack, and grateful for the sugary soda—he needs to stop letting the wolf pick what he eats, but he’s not going to stop today—as they make their way back to their tent with their supplies. It’s an hour hike, but they are nicely out of the way, away from other campers. 

“Well, you get changed, I’ll go find us some firewood for the night,” Hutch offers gallantly. 

“Just watch out for Bigfoot,” Starsky grins at him, pulling his shoes off and easing into the tent to change clothes. When he’s done, he hangs his pants up at least over a tree branch where they can dry off and then comes to help Hutch with the fire, though he mostly makes things harder. 

Hutch has a small hatchet, but when Starsky joins him, he wants to play with it rather than actually chop useable branches off of dead trees, so Hutch is reduced to collecting tinder from the ground and yelling at Starsky who keeps trying to chop new wood. 


	4. Chapter 4

“So. Huggy thinks his coat is still missing,” Starsky says, when they’re back by their tent trying to build a fire. “The ranger’s acting hinky. What if the events here aren’t related to the coat at all?”

“You mean the sightings? Or you think Huggy sent us up here for another reason?” Hutch is carefully laying out his sticks in that lincoln log pattern he likes to start his fires in. He settles back with a sigh and looks at Starsky. He’s doubting his own senses, but maybe Starsky isn’t. “Do you think we really saw something?” 

“I mean… yeah, I do,” Starsky says. “And I think it was bigfoot. Or if it wasn’t, it’s some kind of thing that should stay secret, like you.”

Starsky offers Hutch the lighter from his pocket when Hutch starts looking around for it, passing it over wordlessly, and watches as Hutch lights the kindling in the middle, blowing on it until it catches. He shrugs his shoulders. “Besides, Huggy can always get another coat, right? And we’re still working things out again. So maybe we do keep an eye out, but not too hard.”

At that, Hutch redirects himself bodily towards Starsky, and the case, Huggy, Bobette, all of it drops away. One, Starsky is smart, has good instincts, and Hutch knows he'd do well to trust him. Second…yeah, they do still have things to work through. 

“That's still the most important to me, Starsky,” he says, all his focus on his partner. He chuckles mirthlessly. “Sorry for going in...ah, projecting on Bobette. You know, like jealousy looks good on Mr. Let's Try Seeing Other People. Not a good start.”

Starsky laughs. “I’m pretty sure she’s only interested in making sure you and I stay out of trouble. And jealousy  _ does  _ look pretty bad on you.”

Hutch blushes, hoping the fading light is dark enough to mask it. He groans. “You're being modest. I think she's into you, and honestly I'd be offended if she didn't find you at least a little attractive.”

Reaching out, Starsky pulls them together, hip to hip, as they watch the fire start up. He leans in to kiss Hutch’s cheek. “Besides, you were all ready to fight a bigfoot for me. That’s how I know I should keep you.”

Hutch curls around Starsky, too, sliding into Starsky’s lap and kissing him with more purpose. “I'm also willing to tell a dragon that he needs to keep better track of his hoard for you, and I know which one is scarier.” 

“I mean, he still owes us a few favors, too,” Starsky reminds. 

He slides his tongue into Starsky’s mouth and his hands into Starsky’s hair. “Hey, did you get screened this week, after all?” 

It was something they had talked about, something they wanted to do before sleeping together exclusively, and though Hutch was the more at-risk partner, his results had come back clean. There were a lot of things Hutch wants to do with and to Starsky without a condom. 

“Yeah, but I was too worried to look at the results,” Starsky admits, with a half-sheepish grin. “I’m worried what Ma would say if she ever found out she didn’t raise a nice boy. I got the letter in my backpack, if you wanna check for bad news.”

“ _ Starsky _ ,” Hutch laughs, shaking his head. “It's a perfectly normal part of modern man's health regimen.”

He doesn't reach for it, though, not yet, yielding to Starsky's hold. 

Starsky eases his arms around Hutch’s middle, easing their bodies together and kissing Hutch like he has nowhere else to be and no rush to get there. “Gotta admit, the atmosphere out here is nice, though.”

It  _ is _ nice: the soft mountain sounds, the strong mountain smells, and Starsky, soft and strong with his arms around him. He hadn't felt one hundred percent again, until today. Until right now. 

“Very nice,” Hutch agrees, running his fingers through Starsky’s hair like he can't get enough. “Very secluded, very romantic. Warm. Beautiful.”

He doesn't think he'll ever be done just looking at Starsky, watching his eyes turn golden in the firelight, but then Hutch finds himself kissing him, holding the sides of his neck and drinking him in. He shifts once so he's straddling Starsky’s lap properly for leverage, and goes right back to kissing him. 

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Starsky says, wrapping his arms around Hutch and getting his hands up under Hutch’s shirt. 

Rocking his hips up a little for solid contact, Starsky leans right into kissing Hutch, enjoying the feeling of the fire’s warmth and Hutch’s close contact, of dragging his fingertips over skin and knowing they possess each other for these moments at last. 

“So, what’d you have in mind that required results?” Starsky wonders between kisses. “Or is it a surprise?”

Hutch laughs and pauses, sitting back to admire Starsky’s face—how sweet and innocent he looks, and also wry and clever, a little wicked and very kind. So  _ human _ , in all the good ways. Starsky would be the kind of guy to give his only food to a hungry old woman and get to marry the queen of the fairies out of it. Starsky would complete three impossible tasks to break a princess’s curse, would free a rabbit from a snare and then get saved from an evil witch by the intervention of all the forest creatures. He was so good in such a normal way, and Hutch could only hope to be the queen of the fairies, or the rabbit. 

“Hutch?” Starsky says, and Hutch realizes he’s been quiet for too long. 

“Sorry. I—you’re just distracting.” He kisses Starsky again, and then leans past him to get his pack and rummage through it for the letter, which is, as Starsky said, unopened. He laughs. “You’re such a doofus. I love you. Why don’t you get inside, take off your clothes, and look inside my bag while I check out the bad news?”

“You’re distracting first,” Starsky reminds, but he kisses Hutch on the cheek, and untangles their limbs so he can get up and get into the tent like instructed, struggling out of his shirt and pants in the tight space, the coins around his neck jingling together as he complies. He leans over to dig in Hutch’s bag, finding the regular assortment of clothes, and then under those, something firm. It’s an unusually shaped dildo, with a pretty sizeable bulge in the middle before it got to the balls. “Hey, this is uh…a good idea.”

Maybe he shouldn’t say ‘pretty nice’ about a dog dildo, honestly, but Starsky immediately picks up the why of it. 

Hutch grins as he pokes his head inside the darkening tent, admiring the way Starsky’s skin gleams in the little bit of firelight, admiring the dark thatches of hair on his limbs and on his chest, trailing down between his legs, where it’s even thicker. He loves how hairy Starsky is. 

“We’ll start with that, see how you do,” Hutch purrs, crawling inside until he stands over him on hands and knees. “It, ah—it’ll inflate, too, but it needs to be plugged in. To ah, like to the wall.” 

“Is that safe?” Starsky wonders, having a glance at the other end, but he figures there’s all kinds of stuff out there that he’s never heard of before, and well, is it more or less safe than dating a werewolf. “The electricity, I mean.”

“Of course it is!” Hutch laughs, and leans down to kiss Starsky. “And we can use condoms for easy cleanup, but you got good news from the doctor.” 

“Ah, see, I don’t have to tell my Ma I’m not a nice boy anymore,” Starsky laughs, pulling Hutch’s mouth against his own. He pauses to zip the tent closed again, leaving them in semi-darkness. “All clear, huh? Guess we’re gonna have to dirty things up some other way.”

Starsky pushes Hutch over, kissing him again, getting his hands into his partner’s soft blonde hair, and work on peeling his shirt off. Maybe both of them don’t have to be naked for this, but Starsky appreciates Hutch’s body, the lines and curves and tight places on it. He’s relieved to hear they don’t have to always think so much anymore when it’s just the two of them together, that they can just  _ be _ .

“You let me get my mouth on you, I’ll get you plenty dirty, baby,” Hutch says, and moans as Starsky strips him, enjoying even this. “I’ve been dreaming about how you must taste. How you’ll look with that inside you.”

Hutch waits until Starsky is crouched unsteadily in the corner of the tent holding his pants before yanking him back down, and flipping him over, pinning his shoulders. Starsky looks delicious like this, in every sense of the word, and Hutch shifts so he’s gripping Starsky’s hands and sitting on Starsky’s legs. “First, gotta make sure you’re nice and relaxed.” 

And without any further teasing or foreplay, Hutch gets his mouth on Starsky’s already hardening cock. Starsky gasps, and goes slack almost immediately, letting the resistance go out of his limbs so Hutch can just work, without having to focus on holding Starsky at the wrists. 

Hutch thinks Starsky tastes amazing, even with day-old hiking sweat. It’s salty, musty, filthy, and  _ familiar _ , and Hutch actually does moan aloud. He twirls his tongue around the head and pulls out every trick he knows that doesn’t involve his hands, trying to coax more of that taste out of him. 

(It’s weird, yes, he knows, on some level. On another level, he spends a not insignificant portion of his time in a form that sniffs other people’s butts to say hello, so this maybe isn’t that far from normal.) 

“Hutch,” Starsky manages, in a wavering voice, and then he tilts his head back permissively, rolling his hips up as Hutch practically renders him senseless with his talented mouth, and shameless knowledge of everything Starsky likes already. It feels hotter, closer to be skin on skin, and the tickle of spit sliding down Starsky’s shaft is real and intense. There’s a few moments where his thoughts try to gather up into the concept that he should be warning Hutch, that he should try to last a little longer than thirty seconds.

Then he remembers his wrists are held and Hutch holds him pinned, and decides he’s gonna be at Hutch’s mercy no matter what. Even as the world tries to plunge away and he can only dimly register the way sound is pouring out of his own chest in low groans, fingers clutching back at Hutch’s for stability as he repeats his partner’s name like a clock ticking down. 

If Hutch thought he liked the way Starsky tasted like this, he forgets about it completely at how Starsky  _ sounds _ like this. Hutch likes the sound of his name on Starsky’s lips, anyway, with that adorable Yankee twang that sometimes makes two syllables out of the one-syllable version of his name, and the way his voice sometimes goes high and cracked, or moans low like one of his impersonations. Right now he’s running the gamut, testing his vocal cords, and Hutch is eating it up. 

If he is going to expect Starsky to take something about the size of his werewolf dick up the ass, Hutch is sure he can at least deepthroat his cock in return, and he swallows him until Starsky’s hairs tickle his nose, and then pulls back, and swallows him again, working to shorter, quicker bobs until Starsky comes with a shout. 

And yes, the taste is worth waiting for, though the volume gives him some trouble. He talks a big game, but misjudged Starsky’s virility enough that he needs his hands to help clean up the spunk from his face.

Starsky has to pant for a few minutes, like someone laying on the shore after a long swim, and then he reaches for Hutch and crushes their mouths together without any care at all for how much of himself he’s tasting on Hutch’s tongue and face, reaching for his cock between them to stroke lightly as they kiss and Starsky gets himself together as best he can, and then kiss again. 

“Did I ever,” Starsky starts, and then he purrs out a low, pleased groan that’s half a chuckle at his own joke. “Did I ever tell you you got a smart mouth?”

Hutch blushes and chuckles, and Starsky laughs a little more, shaking both their bodies as he hangs onto Hutch and Hutch hangs onto him, and then he turns to meet Hutch’s eyes with his own. “I hate to seem greedy, but I still would like way more of your attention, so do you want me on my back or on my front?”

“You are definitely getting—all of my attention,” Hutch says, and thinks about how he wants him, which is hard to do when Starsky’s got his dick in his hand. “I guess—” he pauses to kiss Starsky— “since we don’t really have a lot of spare pillows, ah—how are your knees?” 

Hutch groans as Starsky fists his cock, pressing his face into the side of Starsky’s neck, fumbling for lube. “But maybe I fuck you first. Just like this. Get you ready for the big one.”

“Oh yes,” Starsky sighs, before he shifts, stroking Hutch encouragingly. “Then we can take our time, and you can do it all over again, right?”  

“ _ Right _ .” 

Hutch expected to last a little longer before his hindbrain needed to fuck Starsky immediately, but apparently the jealousy from today is doing a number on his libido. He pulls Starsky’s leg up around his waist and begins fingering him open, watching Starsky’s face to tell him whether to go slow or fast. 

Starsky shifts up, rolling his hips into the motion to encourage Hutch. He hasn’t exactly done this in a while, so it’s tight, but he’s already just about as relaxed and willing as he can get. He wants more of Hutch, all of him, and he reaches out to claw the bottle of lube free from Hutch’s bag to practically pour it onto Hutch’s hands himself to encourage him along. 

Hutch laughs a little at Starsky’s eagerness, but it’s more giddy than derisive, glad that Starsky seems just as needy as he feels. He doesn’t wait for Starsky to get used to the stretch before he increases faster, not wanting to wait, though once he’s three fingers in he slows down. He doesn’t want Starsky to be sore before they even begin. 

“How you doing?” he asks, scissoring his fingers slowly, finding and massaging his prostate as if accidentally. The frenzy from before has slowed down somewhat, and he kisses Starsky lazily. He can just manage this slow pace when he reminds himself they have all night, and that Starsky is all his. “You thinking you can handle this, baby? Think you can go all the way? It’s gonna feel good when I fill you up, yeah?” 

“I can handle it,” Starsky says, eager and rocking his hips up hard. “I’m ready for you,  _ all _ of you. C’mon, Hutch. Please.” 

Starsky obliges in turning over, in getting up onto his knees on the thin padding of the sleeping bags, getting two handfuls of the fabric and hanging on, making it easy for Hutch even as he crouches in ready obedience. 

“If you don’t hurry up, I’m gonna be the one who starts doing the biting,” Starsky encourages, when Hutch pauses for more lube. 

“Ooh, promise?” Hutch teases, leaning over Starsky and nibbling on his shoulder. He really should use a condom for quick cleanup but now that he’s here he just doesn’t want to bother, and he really does want to paint Starsky’s insides, wants to be able to smell himself on him. So he slicks himself up and slides in slow, inch by aching inch. 

“You know, maybe the ranger was onto something,” Hutch grunts as he fucks into him. “I know you like bending over for me, but maybe you’d like having me on a leash, too?”

Starsky breathes out a long, hot breath, arching up to make the slide easier. It’s really…  _ different _ somehow, maybe only because Starsky knows there’s finally no barrier between them, mentally, too. He groans. “You’d look good in a choke chain, I think. I promise not to p—”

He bites his words off with a sigh, clawing at the blankets as Hutch finally slides all the way into him, thick and real and  _ there. _ With a breath to steady himself, Starsky tries again, “Pull on it, unless you want me to.”

“I think I might like it if it was you.” Hutch stays there, unmoving, filling him, imagining really filling him,  _ knotting  _ him, and his brain almost follows that rabbit hole and turns him into a wolf right here right now, but he reins it back in. Like with a leash. “Yeah. This doesn’t have to be a one-way street, either. You ever thought about fucking a werewolf, Starsk?” 

It’s a kink Hutch hasn’t really considered before (or won’t admit he’s considered), and he pulls out and snaps his hips forward again, a bit too fast for both of them.

Starsky  _ hasn’t _ thought of it before this moment, and any deeper considerations he might have on the subject (initially, he’s interested) are swiftly driven from his mind as Hutch starts moving, which is everything Starsky wants right  _ now _ . If Hutch expects an answer, he isn’t getting one, just noise and heat, which Starsky tries to muffle in the blankets lest anyone think there’s some kind of  _ bear  _  attack or something, because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t stop even if there was a whole crowd of onlookers. 

“That’s it. You like that,” Hutch teases, maybe, or is relieved Starsky isn’t horrified. Or is just getting into the moment. He shifts his angle, hugs Starsky's back to slide against his prostate, kisses the back of his sweaty neck. Fucking Starsky has never felt this good, though he knows it’s actually no different. “God, Starsk, I love you. You smell so good, feel good, sound good. Think you can come again for me?” 

He’s on the edge of orgasm, but could hold back if Starsky needs a little longer. He really does wonder if he could wring Starsky out like this, make him come again, and again. 

It feels good, really good, but it’s a slow wind. Starsky shudders, grating out his answer. “Not for a little bit.”

What he means is not to hold on for him, he wants Hutch to feel good, too. Knows that the toy’s coming and  _ that’s _ tireless and emotionless enough to get him there, no matter how long it takes and that Hutch will see him through it.  “Ah, Hutch, make me all yours.”

As if anything in the world could make him otherwise. 

Hutch leans in, presses his cheek to Starsky’s hair, and goes at his own pace now—gripping Starsky around the middle, and sinking his teeth into the side of Starsky’s neck, hoping they brought at least one turtleneck between them. 

“Yeah. Mine,” Hutch growls, and comes hard. 

It makes both of them dizzy—or at least it makes Hutch briefly dizzy, and when he collapses against Starsky Starsky falters, too—and he tugs them to one side and lays there, panting for breath and still holding Starsky tight. 

“Mine,” he says again, when he can breathe, and he’s kissing Starsky’s hair and neck and shoulder. He slides a hand over Starsky’s cock, still spit-slick, hard, and leaking, and begins to stroke him slowly, patiently. “And I’m yours, too, Starsk. So what do you want me to do right now?” 

With a faint whine, Starsky pushes back against Hutch, like he could burrow them deeper together, one hand reaching back to press against the small of Hutch’s back and hang on, before he half-laughs, breathless. “More, right? That’s the point. You wanted relaxed.”

Starsky doesn’t think he could get any  _ more _ relaxed and still have enough tension not to sink through the bottom of the tent and leak out into the ground. He turns his head to kiss Hutch over his shoulder, rubbing the back of Hutch’s neck with his free hand. He thinks, maybe, they should try a collar sometime. It’d give Starsky something to tug on when Hutch needed a little encouragement. “Gimme the toy. Don’t go slow, let me feel it.”

“Yeah?” Hutch says, and all of a sudden his brain clears and he is Ready. He gets up, wipes himself with a wet wipe (pauses briefly to admire gummy come-and-lube gluing Starsky’s hairy ass cheeks together) and slicks the dildo up with plenty of lube. 

His experience doing this with a human was pretty minimal. He had tried something like this with Nancy, though a vagina was of course very different. Hutch had dated men before, dated other male werewolves, but he had never been knotted by a werewolf while in human form, so that wasn’t much help, either. The size difference was going to be half the trouble. But he’s paused too long already, and doesn’t want Starsky to worry. 

“I am gonna go slow. Come on, let me hold you,” Hutch says, pulling Starsky into one arm, holding him around his chest so Starsky’s laying half on his side with his legs splayed out, ass up. “You tell me if you need me to stop before I get to the knot.”

“Hutch, I’m not gonna break,” Starsky promises him. The tenderness from the usually prickly Hutch leaves Starsky warm inside, though, and patient. More than he would be if he thought Hutch was taking it easy on him because he thought Starsky was delicate, because he  _ knew _ better. He lets Hutch take it at his own pace, but he’s already pretty stretched out, and really slick from lube both natural and artificial 

It’s harder than Hutch’s dick is, usually. Less forgiving and yielding, but Starsky isn’t uncomfortable as it eases in, further than he’s used to and he’s sure there’s more yet. He closes his eyes and lets it happen, willing himself relaxed, open, permissive.  _ Submissive, _ at least for a little while. “What you said earlier, is that possible? Will you let me do that, as a wolf?”

It’s more a sigh than actual words, but Starsky hasn’t forgotten, anyway. 

Hutch nods, far away and laser focused at the same time. “Of course. The wolf has way fewer hangups than me. Which maybe isn't saying much, but—there.”

He stops at the base of the knot, which flares pretty dramatically. He rocks it against Starsky’s hole, working the toy back and forth over his prostate. “I'm gonna go fast for this part. It's gonna be a lot for a second, and then back to manageable. Okay? I think you'll like it.”

Starsky breathes out, slow. “Okay.”

Then Hutch  _ pushes _ and it the stretch is big, and for a moment it seems like it just won’t budge, like they’re both straining and heaving and it’s just not possible for it to happen, though it isn’t painful, and then Starsky shifts a little and Hutch presses. There’s a give, and then a sudden flare up of sensation and sting of pain and then the whole thing pops into Starsky and his body just seems to grab onto it and pull it deep, and somewhere in all of that, Starsky rockets over the edge and cums again, hard enough to see stars, leaving him dizzy and sticky with it. 

“ _ Fuck _ .” Hutch's face heats and his mouth goes dry, and his cock goes hard again instantly. Starsky has taken it, taken the whole thing, like he was built for it, and not even a little blood. Not only that, but he came without Hutch touching his cock, he came just from that. 

“Yeah, yeah, Starsk, that's it,” he encourages, letting go of the end of the dildo to work Starsky through the last of his orgasm, watching ropey come splatter their sleeping bag. “You've got it, that's perfect, you're perfect. You look so good like this. How's it feel? You like having a good knot inside you?”

There’s no articulate answer to his question, Starsky just mashes his face deeper against the pile of bedding and breathes, trying to get words and thoughts together aside from just a dreamy, euphoric, “ _ Yeah.” _

He smiles, kisses Starsky, let's him catch his breath, and shifts the dildo so it's pressing down on his prostate, maybe a bit harder than necessary. “Then this gets bigger, just holds down the button on your prostate, and who knows what the wolf might start licking. Or keep licking.”

He's teasing a little, grinning, but he's just so happy. “How you doing?” 

“‘M okay,” Starsky grunts, and he thinks as good as this is (and it  _ is _ good, though it’s a lot. It’s so much he feels like he’s going to burst from it already, and he reaches back to catch hold of Hutch’s wrist to keep him from moving the thing around for a few minutes. He thinks, distantly, that it’ll be even better when it’s  _ Hutch _ , no matter what the shape is that he’s in. “Need a minute.”

“Yeah, you got a minute. Got as long as you need.”

Hutch lets go of the dildo, rests it against his hip—even uninflated, it's not going anywhere without a firm tug, and runs his hands over Starsky, soothing. He wants to fuck him again, but that'll have to wait, or maybe he'll just get himself off all over Starsky, rub the scent into his skin as an all-day reminder. He wipes up Starsky's orgasm, and cleans their hands of lube, and kisses Starsky softly, offers him water. “Don't need to do too much hiking tomorrow. You can take it easy.” 

But Hutch’s brain is still on sex, and he's sliding his cock between Starsky's thighs, jostling the handle with every movement. “Maybe, ah. You could wear a plug, so this isn't such a production every time. Not to work, you know, but. When it's closer to the full moon. I could, too, of course.” (Hutch doesn't want to seem unfair.)

Starsky makes a low sound, anticipatory, and squeezes his thighs together for Hutch, reaching down to palm over the head of his cock and help him along as he leans back into Hutch. “Yeah, I was uh, I was thinking like…”

He has to get his thoughts together. “We could make sure I was ready so you don’t have to wait, or worry about hurting me. All stretched out, just for you.”

“Yeah,” Hutch groans, draping himself over Starsky, careful not to push on the base of the toy. “All for me.”

Reaching back, Starsky sinks his fingers into Hutch’s hair, his body protesting doing anything like regathering but the jostling of the toy against his prostate feels good, anyway. Even if it’s utterly impossible for him to get hard again any time soon, it feels good that Hutch is feeling good, that they’re this close again and possessing each other at last. 

Hutch has to use one hand to get himself there, this time, but he orgasms between Starsky's thighs, leaving him slick and sticky and smelling, in his opinion,  _ great _ . He kisses Starsky’s hair and cheeks, getting an arm under his head to cradle him and kiss him, like he wanted to do this instead of sleep. “Why did I ever think we couldn't—?”

“Ye of little faith,” Starsky huffs. He feels like a mess, and doubts there’s any showers, but he doesn’t mind much.

Hutch laughs, like it was years ago instead of months and he could reasonably get away with having been an idiot. He nuzzles into Starsky’s hand, which is still holding onto some of his hair. “You're amazing, Starsk.”

Eventually, Hutch reaches down to tug on the dildo. “Ready for this to come out? I've got plenty of wet-naps to clean up with.”

“Yeah,” Starsky says, untensing his fingers and then relaxing his body. He tenses up some as it starts to slide out of him and the stretch feels… weird. A bit like going to the bathroom, but eventually he can relax and let Hutch pop it free with only one or two really intense moments that leave him sighing and shifting. “Yeah, I’m not hiking anywhere until after noon.”

Starsky rolls over to face Hutch, pulling their bodies together in the mess. “And I think wet-naps are woefully ineffective, here. The blankets are already sticky.”

“Sorry,” Hutch says, grinning like he's not sorry at all. Neither of them are much in the way of neat freaks, and obviously, the mess of sex doesn't bother them. But Hutch does open the screen part of the tent flap, to air it out a bit, and then he double-checks the tube of lubricant. It  _ is _ non-toxic, so...

“Don't suppose you'd mind if I changed forms again?” he asks, and manages to continue with only a light blush at the deviance of it, “Let the wolf do some cleanup? And then if anyone catches us sleeping in the same tent…”

“You’ll get hungry again,” Starsky reminds, but he doesn’t mind at all. “The kid at the snack bar is gonna think you’re some kind of contest eater, after you polish off all the trail mix.”

Starsky just lays back bonelessly anyway and decides everything is come-what-may at this point, even as Hutch hands him a few wet naps that are at least enough to mop some of the sweat off his face and a good deal of the mess off his hands before Hutch changes, and jabs a cold nose into his side so he shifts over and Hutch can get to work on the sleeping bags.

“You know, we’ve been through some weird stuff together, you and I, but this is pretty weird,” Starsky says, as he watches Hutch lick up the mess like any old dog. He reaches out and ruffles Hutch’s ears fondly. “Do you do this in your own kitchen when you drop food, too?”

Hutch rakes his teeth, sharp, over Starsky’s thigh in response, nipping him into silence. 

(But sure, maybe, once, if he dropped something delicious like a meatball, and the moon was right, but he wasn't going to admit that now.)

He goes back to licking, cleaning up the sleeping bag pretty easily (and yes, okay, the wolf  _ likes  _ the taste) before he puts his massive paws on the back of Starsky’s thighs to clean up the mess between his legs. In addition to licking him clean, Hutch's tongue can check for injury this way (he finds none, luckily, tastes no blood), and the motion relaxes his muscles, even massages them, so hopefully Starsky won't have too much trouble walking in the morning. It was also a bit of deja vu, like they had come full circle from when they had awoken to the wolf doing this without Hutch's, or Starsky’s, explicit consent. 

Starsky pushes his face down into the covers and just relaxes, though when it gets to be too much for his overstimulated body, he reaches back and nudges Hutch away so he can roll back over, groping around until he finds a pair of boxers to sleep in, anyway. “The sleeping bag’s still wet, partner, but I guess wolf spit is a little less offensive than sleeping in our own funk, huh?”

He lets Hutch arrange himself, and gets his hands into his fur, gently rubbing. He feels  _ exhausted. _ But it’s easy to relax this way, petting and holding, breathing together. “Love you, buddy.”

Hutch curls around Starsky, feels how small he is in this form, and in the cooling mountain night, he drapes his shaggy head over Starsky’s chest. He licks Starsky's cheek as if to say  _ I love you, too, _ makes a contented sigh, and is asleep. 


	5. Chapter 5

They wake up late enough in the day that Hutch has turned back into a human (which actually happened in the middle of the night, since they had afternoon moon). Hutch is awake first, and slips into clothes without waking Starsky. Last night still feels like a dream, and Hutch wants to dote on Starsky. Making sure coffee is on and pre packaged toaster strudel is available for Starsky's sweet tooth doesn't seem like enough.

Waking him up with a yelp when he discovers that their camp is crawling with footprints like the one they found by the river is _not_ how Hutch wanted to wake his partner.

Starsky comes up fast enough—recognizing the sound of Hutch in distress anywhere—that he hits his head on the top of the tent and rattles the whole thing, before he yanks on a pair of jeans (now liberally adorned with wolf fur) and scrambles out of the tent to discover…well, Hutch isn’t in any immediate danger but he can absolutely see what Hutch was yelping about.

“Holy crow!” Starsky says, putting his hands on his hips and taking a moment to process. “That’s…did you smell anything? Hear anything?”

“No!” Hutch says, alarmed. “Not last night—”

He gets down on hands and knees to sniff the tracks. “But I smell it now! I wish I could take wolf form, but I think the moonrise isn't until later.”

Now Hutch walks around the campsite more carefully, follows the tracks a few yards. “I bet I could follow it even like this. You want to pack up and check it out?—” He looks up at Starsky sharply. “But, uh, how are you feeling?”

“I mean, I don’t wanna go jogging,” Starsky says, but he’s looking down at the footprints around the camp with just as much enthusiasm and confusion as Hutch. “But I think we have to know. Besides, it could all be a hoax, like you said. Something to throw us off the trail.”

“This doesn't smell like a hoax,” Hutch says, still sniffing around.

Starsky gropes around back inside for his shirt, and then after a moment of consideration, he shrugs his holster on over it and starts to pull on his shoes, though he winces when he sits down. “Boy that’s uh, that’s something.”

This redirects Hutch's attention, and he goes to sit beside him, as attentive as a loyal dog. “Starsk? We can take it slow, or we don't have to go at all. It's just our curiosity right? We don't have a warrant to arrest a Bigfoot. I'll call Huggy when we get back to town, and you can soak in my bathtub…”

“No, I wanna know,” Starsky says. “Besides, I’m not broken. It’s not like I’ve been shot.”

Hutch frowns. “I don't like it when you're hurt at all...”

Starsky leans over and kisses Hutch’s cheek, finishing tying his shoes. “Besides, I get the impression this is some kinda message for us, right? One way or the other. Let’s go find out what it is.”

“Okay, well. Eat some breakfast. I'll pack up,” Hutch suggests, handing him a toaster strudel package. Starsky crams the contents into his mouth cold, and finishes getting dressed before he helps Hutch get everything together, not wanting to camp here again no matter what they find.

They're underway in half an hour, going back down the mountain on the path they took yesterday. There's enough evidence that, with Hutch's nose, they move pretty quickly, but they also cover a lot of ground, and end up going far beyond where they chased the Bigfoot yesterday.

“Okay, but it's got to be an immigrated Yeti,” Hutch insists, while they search for the next piece of evidence in an open clearing. It's as good a place as any to stop for lunch, and Starsky breaks out the sandwiches they bought, though Hutch still investigates the area while he eats. “It's clearly _something_ , I just still don't buy Bigfoot.”

“Well, I mean, if it’s a Yeti that moved in long enough ago,” Starsky begins to argue. “Why wouldn’t that _become_ a Bigfoot?”

“I'll allow that. That people just call it Bigfoot,” Hutch says, chewing thoughtfully. He feels the moon beginning to rise—changing will move things along considerably.

There are scratches on a tree, but these smell distinctly of bear. Otherwise, this is something of a dead end. “Maybe I can talk to the Captain about running the pack up here. All of us together would find him for—”

Hutch has to stop, gaping. What he had assumed to be a shadow between the trees suddenly moved just the wrong way. And it was standing just behind Starsky.

“Ah, Starsk? Hey, c’mere a second,” he says, trying to stay calm.

“Huh?” Starsky asks, looking up from the tracks he’s studying. Something in Hutch’s tone tells him to obey, so he does, stepping closer to Hutch who reaches out for him with an unsteady hand before Starsky turns to see what he’s looking at.

It’s then that the creature, space thoroughly invaded, bursts from the trees. Neither of them are debating semantics at that point. It’s huge, it’s hairy, and it’s mad. Starsky grabs Hutch’s hand and they run.

Hutch plans, he thinks, to defend Starsky, to turn into a wolf or draw his weapon tucked under his jacket. But the creature that steps out of the woods is so large, and roars at them and gives chase so quickly, that Hutch doesn't have time to react except by running. Actually, Hutch may not have reacted fast enough if Starsky hadn't grabbed his hand, and tugged him, sprinting—careening—down the mountainside with a twelve-foot gorilla-bear-bigfoot-yeti monster behind them.

They were both screaming, as if defiantly: if no one could help them before they were torn apart and eaten, at least Bigfoot would no longer be a secret. When it was clear it was gaining on them, Hutch shoved Starsky one direction while he took another and slowed down, hoping to draw the creature away. Any minute now and he could transform, maybe scare the Bigfoot off—he didn’t reasonably think he could fight it. He turned and drew his gun, shooting once at Bigfoot’s feet, hoping it understood what a gun was, or at least would be startled by the noise.

Starsky also pulled his gun; whatever Hutch had in his, he’s not sure it’ll be as effective as the one Huggy gave him. The first shot makes the creature hesitate: a massive, shaggy apelike beast with long brown hair. Starsky’s beginning to think maybe Hutch doesn’t know everything about the supernatural at all.

When Starsky looks back at Hutch, he's stripping off his clothes and already changing. He’s still wearing his pants when the Bigfoot decides it's more furious than scared and lunges. Hutch intercepts the beast, if it ever was going for Starsky, knocking him into a tree and to the forest floor. Hutch immediately feels how strong the beast is, strong enough to crush him.

“Hutch!” Starsky calls, leveling his gun when the creature throws Hutch across the clearing and starts to go for him.

Hutch gets back to his feet, shaking his head to clear the ringing, but he's too far and Starsky’s gun won't do anything and—

“Stop!” another voice, feminine, commands, and all parties, even the Bigfoot, freeze.

Hutch is halfway into a leap, and stumbles over his feet. Maybe he hit that tree harder than he thought, and when he looks up, who else is standing over him but Ranger Bobette.

He barks, startled, but she's already striding forward, fearless. She stands between Starsky and the Bigfoot, her hands on her hips.

“What do you think you're doing?” she asks it, like she's scolding a child. Bigfoot growls, but she cuts him off. “Ah-ah. I don't care where they were. What were _you_ doing? These men are cops, do you want to be discovered? You want the whole world to know about you?”

The creature looks at her, furiously, as if she should understand the situation from its point of view, and Starsky rushes to Hutch’s side to pull Hutch into a restraining hold when it looks like he might go for an opening.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Starsky demands, in a high-pitched, uncertain tone. He hadn’t liked the way that thing just _threw_ Hutch like a rag doll.

“You boys didn’t take a hint, is what’s going on,” Bobette says, reaching out to gently, _gently_ touch the creatures arm where Hutch had wounded it. “You’re right smack in his territory, and one of you is a werewolf.”

Hutch yelps indignantly in response, but of course that isn’t exactly the way a dog would react, and anyway he’s still wearing his pants. He whines at Starsky but relaxes a little. He isn’t going to go at that thing again, at least while Bobette is...calming it?

Now that they are at an impasse, Starsky and Hutch can get a good look at the beast. Hutch doesn’t think it’s a Yeti, though it might be related to one. It almost has a gorilla face, but with teeth that are practically tusks protruding out of its face, and it moves more like a human. It’s about as large and powerful as a grizzly, but it touches Bobette almost gingerly, makes a soft whining sound when she gets her First Aid kit out—a small one from her pocket, wholly inadequate—to tend the scratches that are deep and bleeding.

It—he?—bleeds red, which they almost don’t expect.

Hutch paws at Starsky’s backpack, and then, when that isn’t descriptive enough, he decides _What the hell_ , and transforms back into his human shape, tugging his pants back up and fastening them. He looks at Starsky a little sheepishly, and decides he feels stupid less because he was wrong about Bigfoot and more like he hit an animal with his car. But they have a large and very complete First Aid kit in the bag, which he steps forward carefully to offer her.

“Ah, I—here’s—if you need—I’m sorry—”

But the Bigfoot snarls at him, and Hutch practically drops it in her hands and staggers back. He wants to put his shoes and clothes back on, but doesn’t want to take his eyes off the thing.

“He won’t bite you,” she says, but glares at the creature like she wants to say _Don’t prove me wrong, you big dummy_.

“Uh, I guess we’d kinda…maybe almost deserve it a little,” Starsky says. “Sorry. We just had to make sure it wasn’t _somebody in a stolen fur coat.”_

He directs the last at Hutch, but Bobette’s the one who gives him a strange look for it, like she can’t believe either of them. “Boys, I hate to tell you this, but if your momma never told you to take a hint when you saw one, maybe it’s important you hear it now.”

“Hey, we had good reason to believe—” Hutch begins, and then trails off, stupidly, and doesn't say any more.

She finishes wrapping up the scratches, and then reaches up and gives the creature a pat on the shoulder, reassuring. “These guys are very territorial. _Especially_ when it comes to protecting his mate. She’s out there, too, and not too far from where you camped. I tried to lead you away from the area, you know.”

“Is that what that was all about?” Starsky asks, feeling obtuse. “Sorry. Hutch thought they weren’t real.”

“They’re real,” she says. “But the society tries real hard to keep it from getting out. Lots of idiots with guns out there that’d love to bag a trophy. Like a Bigfoot hide, or a Werewolf pelt, maybe.”

“Now, look,” Hutch tries. “You can't—how did you know? I mean before. I mean—” Hutch gives up again, sighs. “I suppose my alpha will want to talk to you. And you could tell him—my people can keep out of these woods. It's better if we know—”

“No. The more people know, the more it's likely to get out,” the ranger said, looking at him sternly. Hutch only gives her a hard look back, so she turns to Starsky now, entreating. “You know what it's like, trying to keep a secret like that.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agrees, though it hasn’t been so hard for him. He has the support of the whole pack, and it wasn’t like Hutch couldn’t disguise himself most of the time. “We’ll keep it secret.”

Bobette sighs. Then she smiles.

“You really thought there’d be someone running around in a fur coat in the woods in the middle of summer?” Bobette asks, like the two of them are the silliest things she’s ever seen. Finally, she realizes herself. “Are you okay, by the way?”

Starsky turns to Hutch. He was the one who got thrown.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Fine.” Now that they mention it, though, Hutch can feel a an ache in his side and shoulder that will most likely bruise until he turns into a wolf again. “How's...he?”

The bigfoot makes an anxious noise, and Bobette soothes him again. The bleeding stopped, she smears an antibiotic cream over the wound and gives the big guy a rice krispie treat from her fanny pack, unwrapping it from the plastic wrap first. “Go on now, go back to your girl. I’ll send these two home.”

Bigfoot gobbles up the treat, reluctantly saving half, and stands up, sniffing at Starsky and Hutch disdainfully.

“I have—” Hutch says, reaching into his bag for some granola bars, but when he looks back up, Bigfoot is gone.

They're alone with Ranger Bobette.

“I'm sorry for snooping around,” Hutch says, and ventures, “I have to tell our captain, our alpha, but he knows how to be discreet.”

“He better,” she says, putting her hand on her hip and giving the pair of them a stern glance. “And I have to notify the society that you guys were here, and there was a run-in.”

“The society?” Starsky asks.

“If you don’t know who they are, you shouldn’t,” she says, with a shrug. “Just that we have the best interests of both humans and supernatural creatures at heart.”

“Right,” Hutch says, like he knows, when he doesn't know at all what she's talking about. Probably Dobey does, and that’s fine for him. “Okay. Uh. Thanks.”

She nods and turns to Starsky. “I suppose that contact information you gave me today was fake? I'd like your badge numbers.”

“No, ma’am, that’s my real address,” Starsky says, with a shrug. “I figured I could take, uh, appropriate responsibility for my ‘dog.’”

He digs in his pocket for his wallet, offering his badge when Hutch does, too. “And we’re happy to get out of your hair now that we have an answer.”

To Hutch's relief, she seems to consider this enough a show of trust that she doesn't actually take their badge numbers down.

“You're welcome back in the area, of course,” she says as she birds up her fanny pack to keep hiking.  “I'm not going to tell you you're no longer welcome here. But you might bring Rice Krispie treats next time. The big ones.”

Hutch and Starsky don't say much on the walk back to the car. Hutch almost doesn't feel it's safe, and half-wonders if they're being followed, like a sheriff escorting them out of town.

“Well, we can call Huggy when we get back to town,” Hutch broaches, as he gets behind the wheel.

“Yeah we gotta tell him he might as well just get a new coat,” Starsky says. He pauses, pulling the door closed and leaning back in Hutch’s seat with a sigh, before he looks at Hutch penetratingly in the side of the head until Hutch looks over at him.  “You owe me lunch for a week.”

“I hate you.”

…

Hutch calls Huggy while Starsky is in the shower. He's stirring some spaghetti sauce on the stove—apparently lunches for a week starts now, even though it's dinner time. As annoyed as he is about Starsky being right about the stupidest thing in the world, Hutch is still too grateful for everything Starsky has been and done for him this past week that he's mostly pretending to be annoyed (because then Starsky will rub it in and he's cute when he gloats).

“Yeah, Hug, so I have some bad news—”

“Hutcherino! My man! You musta scared it back into my closet, what'd you do?”

For a horrible moment Hutch thinks Huggy is talking about _Bigfoot_ , before his brain takes him to something more logical. “You found your coat?”

Now he _is_ annoyed.

“I must have _mislaid_ it,” Huggy says, and Starsky emerges from the shower in a towel and very short shorts, but manages to pick up almost instantly on Hutch’s annoyance, because he approaches to invade Hutch’s personal space and listen at the earpiece. “Because I tell you it was not here two days ago.”

“Huggy, are you telling me you never lost it?” Starsky demands, more amused than angry.

“I think someone stole it and put it back!” Huggy insists, sounding too outraged to be really serious. “So you're still on the clock for me. I need you to find out who—”

“Huggy, you weren't even paying us.”

“Dog, every day a dragon don't kill you is payment!”

“Good _bye_ , Hug.”

Hutch hangs up the phone. He's laughing, but a little manically.

“It was in his closet?” Starsky affirms, and then laughs too. “Well, we learned something anyway. Worth it, I’d say.”

“Yeah,” Hutch says, staring off into the middle distance as he comes to grip with the existence of a Bigfoot, and a Society he didn't know about before protecting it. He wonders if Dobey knows, and doesn't want to think about having to tell him. He's _already_ suspended.

Starsky leans in to kiss Hutch’s cheek, and then spies the tabloid on the table. “Hey! Do you think this means Chupacabra is real, too?”

" _Starsky_!" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay: Cognomen and May are doing a [February Ficlet Challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/February_Ficlet_Challenge_2019) (which includes some Starsky and Hutch!), so check it out if you're bored waiting. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Subscribe to the series!


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